When David came back to Mile End Place that evening he was so drained by the emotions of his extraordinary day that all he wanted to do was eat and sleep.
He and Quin and Tin Ribs had stayed in Sidney Street until the fire had finally been extinguished and two pathetically charred corpses had been carried out of the wreckage. The troops marched away as soon as the blaze was well established, there being no possibility of anybody being left alive in the house for them to shoot at, and the police followed them soon afterwards as a sooty dusk descended to blot out what little light was left under the pall of smoke and the steam from the firemen’s hoses.
It was a melancholy darkness and the three men standing about in its chill watched the last ghoulish act of the tragedy with a growing sense that justice had not been done.
‘I reckon they fired that house deliberate,’ Tin Ribs said.
‘Who?’ David asked. ‘The Russians?’ Surely they hadn’t committed suicide. Not after putting up such a fight.
‘Nah!’ Tin Ribs scoffed at his naivety. ‘The rozzers!’
‘Wouldn’t be surprised,’ Quin said. ‘Makes yer wonder why they done it, though, don’t it?’
David was remembering the fat woman and the way she’d spoken about the Russians. Nice, quiet young men. ‘What if they got the wrong ones?’ he wondered. ‘What if it weren’t them stole the jewellery?’
‘Never know now, will we?’ Quin said. ‘That’s the beauty of a fire. Burns all the evidence, one way or the other.’
It was an uncomfortable idea and it worried him all the way home. So much so, that when Aunty Dumpling came to the door to greet him, bubbling with the news that he had another son, his first reaction was a flicker of annoyance.
Then he remembered himself and went into the bedroom to see his newest child. But he was leaden-footed with weariness.
At first sight and in the soft light from the gas lamp he thought the bed was full of children, for there were so many little hands and so many wide-eyed faces and such a tumble of dark hair above the white linen of their nightgowns. But then he realized that one of the little faces belonged to Ellen, and that she was lying propped against the pillows like a doll, her hands listless and her blue eyes shadowed with fatigue. Jack was cuddled against her side, sucking his thumb, his long face sombre, but his sister sat in the middle of the bed with the new baby weightily across her knees, watching with fascination as he grasped her forefinger with his tiny hand and gazed at her with all his newborn intensity.
‘Look what we got, Pa,’ she said. ‘Ain’t ’e a duck?’
But he was too far gone to respond. ‘You oughter be in bed!’ he told her irritably.
‘We sittin’ up,’ Jack said solemly. ‘Aunty Dump’in’ said.’
‘Till yer Pa come in,’ Ellen said, trying to smooth the moment. ‘You was ter sit up till yer Pa come in. Now ‘e’s in. So you ought ter go ter bed, didn’tcher?’
‘Liddle boys vhat come ter bed good get dolly mixtures,’ Aunty Dumpling promised from the doorway.
‘And little girls?’ Gracie said, smiling because she already knew the answer.
So to the great relief of their parents they allowed themselves to be led upstairs, where Miriam’s baby was mewing like a kitten and Miriam was scolding her husband.
David took off his boots and hung up his jacket and removed his tie. Then he stretched himself out on the coverlet beside his drowsy wife, and they talked in the desultory shorthand of the long-married.
‘Was it bad, nu?’ he asked.
‘I was tired. Miriam’s been a pest.’
‘A pretty baby.’
‘What’ll we call him?’
There was only one name possible after such a day.
‘Benjamin,’ he said. Child of sorrows.
‘Um, I like that,’ she approved, sleepily. ‘Benny.’ She was too tired even to wonder whether he’d ask about the brit. ‘D’you ’ave a good day?’
‘Terrible,’ he said, but he was too tired even to begin the story. ‘Tell yer termorrer.’
When Aunty Dumpling crept back into the room half an hour later, all three were sound asleep, her dear Davey so dark-skinned and red-lipped and handsome, her dear Ellen so pale and exhausted with her lovely hair trailing across the pillow, and that dear little baby tucked under the coverlet between them.
She wrote them a brief note, ‘Stew simmering in sorcepan. See you 8.30. Fondest love, R’, and left them to rest.
Benjamin Cheifitz woke them up at five o’clock the next morning, when they still needed a lot more sleep. While Ellen vas feeding him and changing his nappy, she told his father vhat a hard time she’d had while he was being born, and impressed upon him that Miriam had got to be told to leave. You’ll ’ave ter get rid of her,’ she said. ‘I can’t stand no more. Not after that.’
David was too tired to open his eyes but he groaned a promise.
‘It’s easy enough,’ she said, volubly practical now that she was awake. ‘We want the room back. See if you can get ’em to go ‘fore I’m up an’ about. It’ll be merry hell trying ter share the copper now she’s got nappies ter wash. She’ll be on and on at me, you see if she ain’t’
She spent so much time talking about Miriam he didn’t get a chance to tell her about the siege, and that irritated him because he knew it was a great deal more important than a quarrel between two women. But when he got home in the evening, he didn’t need to, because she’d seen it in the papers.
‘Is that where you was?’ she said, when the kids had been settled for the night. ‘Dangerous anarchists, it says ’ere. Sounds awful.’
David was very upset by the reports in the daily papers, and the story in the ‘Daily Mail’ annoyed him most of all.’ ‘“Three policemen killed, three severely wounded,”’ he read mockingly. ‘“One of the men identified as Peter the Painter.”’ What rubbish! I don’t know how he could write such lies. He was there with me. He saw what was going on. One policeman they shot. Chap called Sergeant Leeson, an’ the last we heard of him he was still alive. It’s a disgrace, printin’ stuff like this. That’s what it is. A disgrace. Peter the Painter, my eye! Two men! That’s all. Two Russians. Nobody knew their names. Nobody. They could’ve been innocent.’
‘Wouldn’t do ’em much good if they was,’ Ellen said pragmatically. ‘Either way they’re dead now, poor beggars.’
‘That’s the whole point!’ David said. ‘If they was innocent then they didn’t oughter be dead. They should a’ been took without all that carry-on. One thousand men they called out. Troops an’ police all blasting away as if it was a war. No sense in it. They should’ve talked to ’em.’
‘Oh come on, Davey,’ she said, ‘you can’t talk to a man wiv a gun in ’is ’and.’
He didn’t know how to answer that because it sounded reasonable and his emotions wanted it to be wrong. So he returned to his original grievance, scowling. ‘I don’t care what anyone says,’ he growled. ‘Newspapers have got a bounden duty to tell the truth. They shouldn’t print lies. Lies are an abomination at any time, but it’s ten times worse when they’re in print.’
He looks so handsome when he’s holding forth, Ellen thought, but the things he was saying were making her cringe. ‘You got ter lie sometimes,’ she tried. ‘White lies. To keep the peace. Or not tellin’ the whole truth in case you upset people. That ain’t a bad thing.’
‘Lies are always bad things,’ he argued passionately. ‘Always wrong, believe me. Ain’t no such thing as a white lie. Truth is the greatest good, bubeleh. You should never ever lie.’
She was remembering the way she’d manoeuvred Miriam into renting that room, and her heart contracted with fear at the thought of what he’d say if he ever found out I been punished for it though, she thought. Ain’t had a day’s peace since she moved in. ‘I’ve suffered enough from Miriam Levy,’ she said, apparently inconsequentially. ‘You will get ’em ter go, wontcher?’
Despite his high ideals, it took David a long time to pluck up enough courage to tell Hymie he had to move. The fortnight’s grace of the lying-in period was long over and both women were up and about and ready to quarrel before he could find the words and the moment.
But he needn’t have worried, for Hymie almost forestalled him. ‘’Course you will,’ he agreed affably, when David ventured that he’d need another bedroom soon. ‘I seen that coming, Cheify, don’t you worry.’
‘You don’t have to rush,’ David said, shamed by the humility of his friend’s compliance.
‘Matter a’ fact,’ Hymie said, ‘there’s a place going in the Buildings, if we can get it. Be about a fortnight.’ He gave a rueful glance. ‘We been a sore trial to your Ellen.’
Such a direct admission embarrassed David even further. ‘Nu-nu,’ he mumbled, avoiding Hymie’s eye.
‘Yes we ’ave,’ Hymie persisted. ‘Me an’ my missus. Your Ellen don’t understand ’er, to tell the truth.’
‘Do you?’ David asked intrigued.
‘Yes,’ Hymie said. ‘Leastways, I think I do. She ‘ad a pretty rough time of it when she was a kid. Makes her prickly, yer see. Quick to take offence. She don’t mean it, ‘alf the time. She’s got a good heart. She’ll make a good mother once she gets the ‘ang of it.’
David sighed. ‘Good mothers spend all their time thinking about babies, don’t I tell you,’ he said. Sometimes he wondered where his lovely Ellen had gone.
‘Be better when you got the place ter yerselves,’ Hymie commiserated, misunderstanding his gloom.
They left Mile End Place three weeks later, and the minute the front door closed on the last of their belongings. Ellen rolled up her sleeves and set to work to eliminate all trace of them. By the time David got home that evening she had restored the house to its original condition.
‘We shall get a proper night’s sleep now,’ she promised. Miriam’s baby had been very fretful, crying for hours and hours, day and night. ‘Peaceful, innit?’
And it was. Peaceful enough. But underneath their apparent contentment, unanswered questions were gathering uncomfortably like boils. She was afraid he would comment on the way she’d treated his mother. While for him, attendance at the synagogue was a weekly reminder of his cowardice. He knew very well how vital honesty was, particularly between husband and wife, and yet he went on avoiding difficult topics. Nowadays, he and Ellen were only truly close on those rather too rare occasions when they had the time and the opportunity to make love. And even then, cuddled against her warm familiar flesh afterwards, his contentment would be whittled away by regrets.
Spring came early that year with a sudden balm that tugged the daffodils into flower and made the blackbirds sing with abandon. Benny put on weight and learned to smile, and by the time summer arrived he was sitting up in his high chair as much a part of the family as either of the others. He was a sociable baby and very fond of company, so, small as he was, they took him on outings, to Epping Forest and the Hackney Marshes, to feed the ducks on the Serpentine and the pigeons in Trafalgar Square, for a boat trip on the Thames and a bus ride to Madame Tussauds, where he slept contentedly on Ellen’s shoulder while his brother and sister squealed at the waxworks.
Now that she had three children of her own, Ellen would have liked more contact with her mother. She wrote to her regularly every week, but the letters back were infrequent and very uninformative, for Mrs Murphy either claimed to be ‘going on alright’ or ‘in the pink’ and she rarely said anything about Maudie or Johnnie beyond the fact that they were ‘getting on alright at work’. But she comforted herself that the lack of a mother who had been so distant for so long was a minor sadness. At least she had a good home and enough to eat and a husband to love her even when they were angry with one another.
Aunty Dumpling came to visit them at least twice a week, and once a month they went to visit her and Mama Cheifitz, and were welcomed and fed, and with mutual caution managed to make an apparent success of nearly every occasion. But it was Wednesday afternoons that Ellen enjoyed without reservation, because that was when she took the kids back to Whitechapel to see Mrs Miller and Ruby. Ruby was still in service and hating every minute of it even though Amy had joined her now and they were both working in the same kitchen.
‘You ain’t ‘alf lucky, Ellie,’ she would say, looking enviously at Ellen’s growing brood.
And Ellen would say, ‘Your turn’ll come.’ And wonder whether she ought to disenchant her, and decided against it because it wouldn’t have been fair.
Later that spring she was glad she’d held her tongue, for she arrived in Mrs Miller’s kitchen one Wednesday afternoon to find Ruby scrubbed and clean and in her Sunday best, glowing with the news that she was walking out.
‘’E’s ever such a nice feller,’ she confided. ‘Name a’ Sid. He’s a roundsman. Delivers the bread where I work. We been passing the time a’ day fer weeks and weeks. Didn’t ‘alf make cook wild. I never thought he’d ask me out. How do I look?’
‘A treat!’ Ellen said. ‘’E’s a lucky feller.’
He arrived ten minutes later, a thickset burly young man with a timid red face and huge red hands covered with callouses. When they were introduced and he shook hands, he apologized for his rough touch. ‘It’s on account a’ pulling the van, yer see,’ he said. ‘A full load takes a bit a’ doing.’
Ellen could imagine him between the shafts, pulling the van, like so many of the roundsmen she’d seen, working like a horse, with the same strength and patience, and she liked him at once, for his gentleness and his diffidence and because he was courting Ruby. ‘You’re gonna be very happy tergether,’ she told Ruby, thinking ‘despite the odds’. Life would be hard for them because they were poor, but at least they didn’t have religion between them. And that was a lot to be thankful for.
At the end of June, just after Gracie’s fifth birthday, David walked them all down to the People’s Palace to introduce them to Mr Eswyn Smith, who was as dishevelled and welcoming as ever and had his left arm in a sling.
‘A slight contretemps with a stair rail, dear chap,’ he explained when David commiserated. ‘Nothing at all.’ And he changed the subject quickly. ‘I see you’re doing well with Mr Palfreyman. We take the magazine every week, just to keep an eye on you.’
Yes, David admitted, pink with pleasure, he was doing well. And he introduced his family, equally proudly.
‘So now you have four beautiful models, eh?’ Mr Smith said, beaming at them.
‘’E don’t draw us!’ Ellen laughed. ‘I only wish ’e would. ‘E’s too busy wiv bridges an’ markets an’ such like. First nights at the theatre. Very a la!’
‘A wasted opportunity, ma’am!’ the Art master said. ‘If you don’t mind me saying so. At last year’s exhibition we sold every single child study on show. They’re all the rage.’
‘There y’are!’ Ellen said to David, delighted with the information. ‘I been on an’ on at ‘im ter draw the kids.’
‘A collection,’ Mr Smith suggested. ‘Ready for this year’s show. Sell like hot cakes, I promise you. You’ve got five weeks. See what you can do, eh?’
So Ellen turned the empty front room into a studio, with an easel in front of the window, and a shelf for his paints, and all his brushes neatly arranged in one empty marmalade jar and all his pencils in another, and watched with great pride while he produced three portraits, one of each child.
They sold for ten guineas apiece. It was wealth unheard of. They all had brand new coats for the winter and David determined to exhibit a collection every year from then on.
In the meantime, it was September and time for little Gracie to go to school. The child took it all in her sure-footed stride, but it worried her father so much that he arranged to be allowed to arrive late to work for the first week of term so that he could escort her safely to the gates. The memory of his own miserable first day was still too vivid and too painful.
But Gracie liked school and came home after her first day full of enthusiasm. ‘Isn’t he a funny old Pa to worry so?’ she said to her mother.
‘It’s because ’e loves yer,’ Ellen said and they were both pleased with the answer. The seasons came and went, and one year followed another, and very little happened that was of any consequence. Ruby Miller married her affable Sid and gave up work to keep house for him in two rooms above a corner shop in Commercial Street, and a year later had a daughter of her own to pet. David sold more of his paintings and learned how to prune the roses, Gracie learned to read and write, and Ellen fed her family and learned to recognize the birds that sang in her garden and felt quite a countrywoman. And although they weren’t so happy as they’d hoped they would be, at least they’d achieved a balance. But sometimes, brooding quietly on his way home from the synagogue, David would yearn for honesty and remember the ease of their courtship when there was no need to dissemble. And Ellen, standing beside the sink up to her elbows in soapsuds, would remember how happy they’d been in the old days and how very much they’d loved each other when there were no bills or chores or anxieties to subdue their pleasure.
And soon it was 1914, and Ruby had another baby, a boy called Tom who was the ‘spit an’ image’ of her Sid, and Jack Cheifitz was five years old and had to follow his sister to school. He didn’t think much of the idea. ‘Ain’t going!’ he said, his long face determined. ‘I’m stayin’ ’ome.’
‘You got to,’ Gracie told him with the splendid superiority of her seven and a half years. ‘If you stay ‘ome, the School Board man’ll come an’ get yer.’
‘Don’t care!’ he said with tearful bravado.
She knew the answer to that too. ‘Don’t care was made ter care, Don’t care was ‘ung, Don’t care was put in a pot, An’ boiled till ’e was done.’
‘Leave yer brother be,’ Ellen said. ‘’E’s only little. Now dry yer eyes like a good boy an’ don’t make a fuss. Yer Pa’ll come with yer.’
But this time Pa was too busy, because there was going to be a war and he’d gone down to a place called Chatham to draw a battleship.